McDonnell leads in new poll, but …
Bob McDonnell leads his three potential Democratic Party rivals in the 2009 governor’s race in a new Rasmussen Reports poll, but a look inside the numbers shows reason for concern for the Republican candidate once the dust from the June 9 Democratic primary has settled.
Pollster Scott Rasmussen indicated that each of the three Democratic candidates – Creigh Deeds, Terry McAuliffe and Brian Moran – is attracting a relatively low level of support from within their own party in the polls, an indication that supporters of one or the other candidates are not willing to admit to pollsters that they will vote for the eventual nominee if their candidate is not ultimately selected.
Rasmussen also noted the high number of undecideds among Dems heading into the last seven weeks of the primary season.
Other data points:
- 56 percent of those surveyed said they approve of Democrat Tim Kaine’s performance as governor. A similar 56 percent approve of the job that Barack Obama is doing as president. This suggests that at least for now there isn’t a significant anti-Democrat backlash that could argue as being a necessary part of the infrastructure of a minority-party campaign.
- McDonnell’s favorable/unfavorable ratings were 58 percent/16 percent. This is not surprising as whatever attention there has been in the general public on the ’09 governor’s race has been not on McDonnell, who is running unopposed for his nomination, but on the Democrats, who have a primary later in the spring. Not coincidentally, the unfavorable ratings for the Dem candidates with the spotlight on their race are 43 percent for McAuliffe, 38 percent for Moran and 35 percent for Deeds. Those numbers are generally in line with the numbers associated with the support for McDonnell in the hypothetical two-way races he would have with each of the three potential opponents, which are consistently in the 44 to 45 percent range.
- It could be of interest to point out that the 44 to 45 percent support for McDonnell also matches up well with the unfavorable ratings from Virginians for Kaine and Obama and with the John McCain vote in Virginia in the 2008 presidential election. A first-glance thought from me on that is that the numbers could be suggesting that McDonnell is already topping out his support among the general-election set.
- Story by Chris Graham
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All depends on how brutal the rest of the primary season is. Is T-Mac going to keep overwhelming the competition? Does Moran have to whack at T-Mac to knock him back? Will Deeds walk to the finish line past their wrecked campaigns after they beat each other up?
No doubt how the primary season goes has a lot to say. I’m not assuming best- or worst-case scenarios in what I’m offering above. I do assume that Democrats will by and large end up rallying around their nominee. Which is not always a safe assumption, but none of these three is so out of left field as to engender a mass exodus should they get the nod.
Do you remember what Gilmore’s poll numbers were in early 2001? I know people has say he messed up state finances, (no car tax sounded good to me) but I don’t remember things being that bad in 2001. It wouldn’t surprise me if his numbers were better than Kaine’s are now.
I’d be surprised, but it’s worth looking up.
The real question is, when are people going to start looking at McDonnell as the right winger he is? I’m convinced once people know, and stop seeing him as a reasonable, moderate guy, his support will go WAY down. It’s just a matter of time.
Good insight, Jenny. I think he could be topping out right now. This lead is a simple reflection of the fact that the Democrats haven’t decided on a candidate. All of the other fundamentals of this race, from approval ratings for Kaine and Obama on down, show a Democratic electorate pulling together in November.
All last summer, conservatives wondered when people would see Barack Obama for the liberal we saw him to be instead of a cool, moderate guy. Didn’t happen. McDonnell has the cool, moderate image. You’re banging your head against the wall pushing the right-wing line.
Beg to differ. The difference between last year and this year is the reason McDonnell hasn’t yet had to answer the questions about his resume is Democrats are focused on picking their own nominee and not on McDonnell. Last year Republicans had nine months, basically from Super Tuesday onward, to pick apart Obama, and even had help from Hillary in doing so, since she was running a hard campaign that was clearly doomed to fall short, up to June.
Another key difference is the makeup of the electorate here in Virginia. Barack Obama was able to get 52 percent here last fall. And his approval ratings are at 56 percent here now.
It’s not a done deal by any mean, but the fundamentals of this election are trending Democratic. McDonnell’s lead in the polls is an illusion. The morning of June 10 the race is a three- or four-point lead for whoever the Democratic nominee is, and that’s before we get to tell people who McDonnell is and what he represents.
Of the Virginia Republican electorate last fall, how many were so mad at George W. Bush they couldn’t see straight? One percent? Two percent? Five or 10 percent?
Probably enough to drop Obama’s 52 percent to 50 percent. McDonnell looks nice and sensible. Voting for T-Mac, Moran and Deeds isn’t as exciting or historic as voting for Obama. And blame for the slow economy resides more on the Democratic side by fall.
Obama wasn’t the only statewide winner last year. Warner got 63 percent of the vote against another former governor. We might be working backwards from the numbers from Warner, who will no doubt play a key role in this year’s elections as well.
Blame for the slow economy should already be reflected in the numbers for Obama and Kaine, both of whom are at 56 percent.
And how do Republican volunteers respond to the Frederick fiasco in terms of their energy level for the fall? McDonnell intervened in that one, unwisely in my view.
This is a 54-46 election D-R right now.
I still can’t get my head around the idea McDonnell goes for a 10-point lead to a five-point deficit in the next two months. Undecideds going 75-80 percent to the Democratic nominee during primary season?
If the primary has a 50-35-15 split, maybe the winner has a one or two-point lead in June. Anything closer and McDonnell stays ahead during the summer lull (lull for voters, not politicos).
Come on, I thought you had a file drawer with all Virginia governor polls going back to 1989.
The reason you can’t get your head around the swing that is coming is that you’re assuming that McDonnell’s lead isn’t more a reflection of the division of Democrats heading into their primary and is instead a reflection simply of McDonnell’s standing with voters.
He’s already at 44 or 45 percent in the individual two-way races with the three Democrats. Democratic voters in the Rasmussen poll, according to the crosstabs, are staying loyal to whoever their guy is when asked their opinion on two-way races involving Democratic candidates that aren’t their guy. That will change once the party decides on a nominee. Support for McDonnell isn’t likely to change much during the summer lull that you mentioned. His 10-point lead evaporates literally overnight, and not due to anything special the Democratic nominee does, other than accepting the nomination that comes his way.
It’s 47-44 or 48-44 by June 10 (or thereabouts), and somewhere in the same area by Labor Day. Voters start paying attention then, and then the full-court press on McDonnell and his associations with the far right get their first hearing, and his position on the unemployment stimulus issue gets its first hearing, etc. on McDonnell as a candidate getting his first vetting from the voters when we’re live and running to Election Day.
It’s a comfortable working margin late, and the question by Election Day is, Do the Dems also take the House of Delegates?
It will be McDonnell winning 52-48. I don’t think he’s at his ceiling yet.
Republicans keep the house. What’s the current margin?
A state trending moderate Democrat for the past decade suddenly turns ultraright conservative Republican. In spite of approval ratings for the Democratic governor and Democratic president in the high 50s. Who’s rooting for the home team here, and who’s crunching numbers?
1. Is the trend the state, or just one man – Mark Warner – and his coat tails?
2. Warner won in 2001 while George W. Bush had approval numbers in the 80s.
Sometimes numbers translate, sometimes they don’t.
3. What were Gilmore’s approval numbers in 2001? I haven’t found them yet, but would be good to know for discussion.
1. Do you think Warner doesn’t still have coattails?
2. What might have led to Bush’s 87 percent approval rating in November 2001? Was it approval of what he was doing specifically, or the fact that Americans were rallying behind their leader post-9/11 generally? Nobody had a bad word to say about President Bush between 9/11 and Election Day ’01. Obama’s approval rating of 56 percent comes at a time when Republicans are doing everything they can to paint the current president as a socialist traitor to his country. Apples and oranges.
3. I have not been able to find any specific numbers on Gilmore’s 2001 numbers, either. I covered that election closely, and I remember generally that Gilmore was not a positive factor for Mark Earley, to the point where Earley ran away from him the way Jerry Kilgore ran away from George Bush in 2004. (And Al Gore rather unwisely ran away from Bill Clinton in 2000.)
Switch 1,000 votes to George Allen in 2006 and Warner is a one-man trend. Maybe he has coattails this year, maybe he doesn’t.
So the NV archives has the info we’re looking for?
You think Warner is a one-man trend if Webb loses by 100 votes to Allen? Who was running for president and was so far ahead of Webb in the polls that the DNC was writing the race off in the early summer? Interesting observation.
What role do you think Warner played in the Fifth District with Perriello and Goode? Perriello is a Warner centrist, but that one wasn’t about Warner as much as it was about Perriello running a smart campaign.
Webb ran a smart, stealthy campaign, and benefitted from Warner support, sure, but Warner’s involvement in that campaign came relatively late, because if you remember, he was busy until mid-October that year running for president.
The three guys running for governor this year will certainly benefit from a Warner magic touch or two, but you’re underestimating what we’re doing in Virginia if you’re thinking it’s all the magic touch.
As long as Virginia Dems nominate middle-of-the-road, business-focused candidates against far-right Republican candidates, Virginia is going to trend Democrat. When we slip up and nominate Northeast liberals, and you guys come to your senses and nominate candidates that the right wing denigrates now as RINOs, then you guys win.
We happen to have the numbers and the candidates lining up pretty well right now, and your side is on the wrong side on both trends. We’ll slip up, and you’ll smarten up, eventually. In the meantime, ’09 is ours for the taking, and if I do my job right, we won’t do our part to slip up and start going all liberal on ourselves anytime soon.
Allen and Good were victims of the burnout/throw the bum out/change/give the new guy chance dynamic that works against the Democratic candidate for governor. Add two percent points to McDonnell for that, along with two points for an uncontested primary and two points for the Democrats’ contested primary.
Add those six points to McDonnell’s current 45 and you have a winner. Add another percentage point for Moran and McAuliffe’s battle over coal, and McDonnell wins 52-48.
I’d ask you who would be less far-right candidate for the Republicans this year, but I wouldn’t want to ruin that person’s career.
Wishful thinking. It is spring, and the evening air was quite refreshing, so I’ll grant you some wishful thinking today.